Staying small and nimble
Tackle Design work ranges from
small bomb robot to jet engines
By ANNE KRISHNAN
The Herald-Sun
July 22nd, 2005
Two weeks before Marine reservist Jonathan Kuniholm shipped out for Iraq, he contacted his colleagues at Tackle Design with a request. Faced with few resources and expensive technology, he hoped his partners at the industrial design and engineering firm could develop a low-cost robot to evaluate improvised explosive devices, the kind of bombs causing the most fatalities in Iraq.
Tackle's Chuck Messer, Jesse Crossen and Kevin Webb took up the challenge, modifying a high-end, radio-controlled toy truck with a slower transmission, a new body, a wireless camera and the ability to drop explosives at the site of a bomb. Kuniholm packed the bomb robot in his locker and took it to Iraq, where he and other soldiers used it daily.
Those kinds of projects show the advantage of being small, quick and flexible, said partners with the 2-year-old firm.
“We keep things humble,” Messer said. “It allows us to choose which projects to take on without having to look at the bottom line all the time.”
Tackle can advise its clients at any stage in product development, from concept to manufacturing. Since its inception, it has worked with seven major customers and numerous small clients.
“It ranges from a client just having an idea with no idea how to execute it, to a surgeon who has a very clear idea of what he wants or needs,” Messer said.
While engineers focus on developing and refining a mechanism, industrial designers make the equipment smooth, pleasant and productive to use, said Ron Kemnitzer, a professor in Virginia Tech's industrial design program and president of the Industrial Designers Society of America.
“Industrial designers generally are really concerned with the user and the experience the user has with the product,” he said.
But clients are increasingly hiring companies like Tackle to serve both functions, he said. The company's founders have undergraduate or master's degrees in both engineering and industrial design.
As a result, Tackle's partners seem to be comfortable working with any technology, from new materials to software code, while at the same time staying true to the innovation and creativity of industrial design, said Bryan Laffitte, chairman of N.C. State University's industrial design department. That's a necessary combination, he added.
“So much can be offshored these days that the work that is done in the United States needs to be based on collaborations amongst technical disciplines using industrial design as a catalyst, and I think that's what they do,” he said.
Tackle began two years ago out of a summer biomedical engineering project in which four of the company's five founders helped develop a set of tools for robotic heart surgery.
“We had such a good time, we decided to start a company from there,” Messer said. He wrote his master's thesis under Laffitte on designing a design firm. He then began running the company out of N.C. State's College of Design as he and his partners finished their coursework.
After graduation, the men set up a shop and studio in a house in Raleigh's Boylan Heights neighborhood, and for the past year they've been running the business full time.
“Doing it that way, we were able to start the company with very little investment,” Messer said.
Tackle recently moved its office to 107 N. Church St. in Durham. The Bull City values creativity and unusual ideas, and it's a positive place where artists and business people can express themselves, Webb said.
“There's a lot of energy, a lot of enthusiasm about making things happen,” Messer added.
Messer, Webb and Crossen work at the firm full time. Kuniholm, a doctoral student in biomedical engineering at Duke University, works there part time as he continues his studies and recovers from an explosion that ended his tour in Iraq. A fifth partner, Jason Stevens, currently works elsewhere.
The company can help inventors or established companies develop product prototypes and software. It also can evaluate a company's manufacturing or creative processes.
“We play a support role for innovation, and that comes in a lot of different forms,” Webb said.
The company's biggest project has Tackle regularly evaluating a California aerospace engineering firm's jet engine manufacturing process. The client is open to experimentation, even if the ideas don't always succeed, Messer said.
“It's really inspirational to be able to go in there and make suggestions and have an impact on how a very large company works,” Webb said.
On the smaller end of the business, Tackle helps artists with technical glitches that arise during large installations. The artists may be able to pay little or nothing, but “we love that kind of work,” Messer said.
And the firm continues to work with the East Carolina University physician who commissioned Tackle's initial work on heart surgery tools. Tackle helped secure a 3-year grant from the National Institutes of Health for the project, and the firm has developed a work plan and trained the project's staff on brainstorming and the creative process.
Tackle charges as little as $5,000 for developing a small prototype, while a complex prototype could cost $20,000 to $30,000 or more, Messer said. In ongoing relationships, Tackle bills customers incrementally for its time.
The business had nearly $100,000 in revenue in its second year, and the partners expect that to double or triple this year.
But Tackle's goal isn't to be a high-growth company. Instead, the partners want to remain small and nimble.
In busy times, that means they're spread thin. In slow times, they know they could drum up business within a matter of days if they renew their advertising with Google.com. So far, they've received a huge return on their initial $300 investment, Webb said.
“That kept us in business for the first year,” he said.
And after spending its first two years with national clients garnered from Google and word of mouth, the company's goal now is to expand its business in the Triangle.
“Local things are the next big frontier,” he said. “Right now, [Research Triangle Park] seems a lot farther away than California.”